I found something to appreciate about each of these three flicks from my Tubi watchlist, but I was always left wanting more. Let’s take a look.
ALL HALLOWS’ EVE: INFERNO (2024)
This pseudo-sequel to the All Hallows’ Eve horror anthology franchise makes only one reference to the holiday…on a car radio right before the car crashes at the beginning of the wraparound. None of the stories take place on Halloween, so this one doesn’t even live up to its title.
The wraparound is perhaps the scariest part. It’s from the POV of the person in the car crash, who is whisked away to a hospital from hell, like something out of Silent Hill. Very creepy and trippy.
1st tale – a guy is terrorized by a tentacled creature in his nightmares, so dream researchers decide to use an experimental drug on him. The visuals are quite cool.
2nd tale – a deaf woman brings a kidnapped man out to the desert to get revenge. This one is bland and brief.
3rd tale – this is a good one for those longing for the days of Asian horror from the early 2000s. A young girl who refuses to participate in a ritual to ward off an Asian ghost girl becomes possessed by it.
4th tale – people are trapped in some sort of facility with a demon monster that reacts to sound. This one feels like it drops you into the middle of a story that has already begun, so you have no frame of reference for what is going on.
The monster designs rock and deliver on the horror, but overall, some of these stories barely feel like stories at all.
CURSED (2024)
I’d describe this slow-paced but interesting film as Misery meets Drag Me To Hell with a dark fairy tale feel.
A dude wandering and desperate in the snowy woods is taken in by a woman in a cabin, who tends to his needs. When he commits a heinous act while she’s out, their relationship starts to unravel.
She begins to suspect he did something awful. He tries to hide it. They play a weird mind fuck game with each other. They also fuck around.
At the same time, he begins to have delusions and nightmares, and some of them are eerily witchy. It’s almost like he’s cursed…
There’s lots of talk and little horror until only 10 minutes remain. There’s a bizarre transformation and a fantastical, satisfying ending, but the pacing might not be for everyone.
MONSTER MASH (2024)
This was an almost delightful little homage to the classic movie monsters, but it is hurt by a script that just goes nowhere. It reminds me of a mashup of the Rankin/Bass classic Mad Monster Party and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, but it just takes forever to really get going.
Dr. Frankenstein is making plans to create a new, all-powerful, immortal monster to inhabit himself because he’s dying. Ironically, he kidnaps the daughter of Dracula, and all he really had to do was ask her to bite him and he could have been an all-powerful, immortal monster…
Instead, he needs certain ingredients from the classic monsters for his new creation. Conveniently, all the monsters descend on his castle—the Frankenstein monster is already his bitch.
Drac arrives looking for his daughter, and he definitely gets the best lighting.
And of course, The Mummy, The Wolfman, and The Invisible Man show up.
The monsters team up to find Drac’s daughter and eventually take on Dr. Frankenstein’s new monster in a sequence that comes across as a nod to Godzilla vs. Rodan.
Unfortunately, the majority of the film is preparation for the final battle with all talk and no action. It’s only in the last 20 minutes that the campy, old school tone finally shines through, with the monsters taking on a stop motion beast. If only the whole movie had carried this spirit, this would have been a blast. It also would have been great if the monsters broke into a “Monster Mash” dance to celebrate their victory at the end…
